While it’s always important to understand the value of optimizing for search rankings and getting positive reviews – first impressions matter on Amazon.

The number of new entrants into every category is through the roof.

If you want to stand out, it’s time to invest in not only building your own brand to help support an increased amount of search, but also time to invest in high-quality visuals to give a quality first impression.

The key to success on Amazon is optimizing for their search algorithm.

Also, influence buyers by having good ratings and reviews around your product.

There are many ways to accomplish this, but one critical thing to do is to comment/reply to all your current reviews.

Want more insights like this?

We’re on a mission to provide businesses like yours marketing and sales tips, tricks and industry leading knowledge to build the next house-hold name brand. Don’t miss a post. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

They’re not the most vendor-friendly platform and make changes from time to time that aren’t in the best interests of sellers.

Not saying Amazon isn’t a big deal, just suggesting that Amazon should be just one pillar of four or more major channels including Facebook Ads and Google Ads – and, of course, your own direct web storefront.

The Amazon channel should have its own team and its own procedures within your organization.

With roughly half of the online market share in the USA, you just can’t succeed on Amazon unless you have a dedicated team with dedicated time and expertise on this channel.

There is so much to unpack here that it would take a book to share everything, but focusing on the best-sellers on the Amazon product categories pages can help you know if your items are priced well enough to gain sales and profits.

Unless you’re selling truly unique products, you’re likely competing with other sellers to be the merchant behind the “Add to Cart” button.

There are two big ways to get in Amazon’s favor — and, Amazon being Amazon, they center around shipping.

Utilize Fulfillment By Amazon, their fulfillment service, to store and ship orders, and if you’re a quick-shipping, high-volume e-retailer, try to qualify for their Seller Fulfilled Prime program, which guarantees access to lucrative Prime customers.

I’ve seen a number of clients test them compared to the campaigns they built themselves based on tons of keyword data, metrics, etc., and still have Amazon’s auto-generated campaigns produce a higher ROI. If it works for your brand, that’s time you can spend elsewhere.

With more than 2 million sellers worldwide selling on Amazon, gaining the necessary visibility to succeed can be difficult.

However, all hope isn’t lost.

Amazon’s latest release, headline search ads, may help new and experienced sellers by putting their products front and center in Amazon search results.

Headline search ads are pay-per-click ads that help sellers target customers based on specific search terms.

Once campaign parameters are set (keywords, bid amount and daily budget), headline search ads appear at the top of search results – a powerful opportunity to outrank similar products (aka healthy competition), drive shoppers to your listings and increase sales.

Amazon has a lot of similarities to Google Shopping – they are keyword and price driven.

If you’re doing well on Google Shopping, export the list of keywords and see what you’re doing the best at – then use that to bid on those keywords on Amazon to get some initial traffic flowing through and see if those keywords are going to work on Amazon as well.

If you sell a variety of products, that may or may not be unique from your competition, focus on selling the more unique products on Amazon and building up your product reviews.

Once you have several products that have a lot of positive feedback, then even if you have other products that your competitors have, you may build more of a loyal following based on those few unique products.

The Short & Sweet of It

Sellers are able to successfully charge higher prices for the same product using the following tactics on Amazon:

Brand your product

Register your brand with Amazon

Use high-quality images and videos

Use your branding on product images, packaging, description, title, etc., so that it stands out from the competition

Get lots of reviews

Want more insights like this?

We’re on a mission to provide businesses like yours marketing and sales tips, tricks and industry leading knowledge to build the next house-hold name brand. Don’t miss a post. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Tracey Wallace is the Editor-in-Chief at BigCommerce, where she covers all things ecommerce: marketing, design, development, strategy, plus emerging trends, including omnichannel and cloud replatforming.She is also the Founder of Doris Sleep, a bed pillow company selling 100% certified recycled plastic bottle filled pillows in three custom sizes.